


lives of quiet desperation

by leiascully



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Community: dogdaysofsummer, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-02
Updated: 2006-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The grass is long and Sirius has lost himself in it somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lives of quiet desperation

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Marauders  
> A/N: Prompt was Essex. Title is from Thoreau.  
> Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ and all related characters are the property of JK Rowling and Scholastic. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

The countryside is flat but the grass is long and Sirius has lost himself in it somewhere. Remus looks for the depression that will reveal where Sirius has gone and feels a pang of despair mingled with a sense of the inevitable, that he is looking at things the way he had always thought a soldier would. Off beyond the blue line of hills at his back there are whispers of a war: insubstantial, insidious, a shiver in the dark, the reason his parents had sent him out to James' in the first place.

A hand catches his ankle and he yelps and tumbles to the ground and then Sirius is on top of him with a hand over his mouth. "Shhhh, Moony, you'd make a terrible soldier," Sirius says next to his ear, and the weight of him is an electric pressure. Remus feels the bones of the earth under him and the bones of Sirius on top of him and he is caught as always in a destiny he cannot fathom. Sirius' eyes flick to his and his fingers tremble. "I haven't got the heart for it," Remus mumbles against the creases of Sirius' palm, and he cannot even hear himself. He tries to breathe and is left with the taste of salt. Sirius hesitates as if he is fighting some war of his own, then the hand across Remus' mouth is clasping his shoulder instead, and Sirius' lips are pressed to his, and he still cannot breathe but it doesn't matter because Sirius is life itself against his mouth. It is a kiss both deep and swift, viciously adoring, and then Sirius has rolled away and is sprinting over the grass, his arms flung wide and his head thrown back.

"All right, mate?" says James, coming up blinking and smiling, seemingly unaware, as Remus props himself up with arms unexpectedly weak, and Remus wants to say no with some awful premonition of a world out of joint, but he says yes.


End file.
